Bob Ross

Will we ever get tired of how weird AI “deep dream” is? Alexander Reben has been feeding episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross into the neural net. Predictably, his hair gets even stranger. [IFL Science]

Art Cologne is in talks to absorb abc fair, launching Art Berlin in its place. How many art fairs can Germany possibly sustain? [The Art Newspaper]

More “Fearless Girl” controversy. Sculptor Arturo Di Modica, who created the original “Charging Bull” claims the promotional stunt distorts the intent of his work, and will be holding a press conference about it today. [The Washington Post]

Kate McKinnon as Cecilia Giménez, the abuelita who famously repainted “Ecce Homo” in Borja, is the best art critic SNL has ever had: “The first great question any sculptor must ask about the subject: what would he look like if he had a stroke? But he had the stroke while saying ‘cheeeeeese!’?” She’s talking, of course, about Emanuel Santos’s much-mocked bust of hunky soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo. This whole debacle reminds me of the I Love Lucy/Faces of Meth story from last year. Should we just give up on bronze busts of celebrities? Probably. [Mashable]

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art will be free for teenagers starting this June. Unfortunately, admission is going up to $15 for adults. Youth is wasted on the young. [Chicago Tribune]

Jeffrey Deitch is heading back to LA, this time to open a gallery in Hollywood. [artnet News]

Ian Macfarlane has won Dezeen’s competition for a post-Brexit passport design. His proposal features the dark blue of old British passports in a gradient, erasing the familiar burgundy EU passport cover. I still can’t believe this is really happening. [Dezeen]There are too many highlights from the NYT Style Magazine profile of Sophie Calle… let’s just say the artist’s meet with the journalist begins(ish) by explaining that seemingly-fake-pregnant Calle is using the opportunity to enact giving birth to her dead cat. [The New York Times]

Headline of the day: “Bob Ross Was a Tyrant and Hated His Perm, Says Former Manager.” [artnet News]

Police were called to an art gallery in a small town in Australia over a complaint of a nude self-portrait by painter Dennis McIntyre. But you can’t even see his junk in the painting! It’s covered by a teapot. It’s not clear who exactly was so offended by this portrait that they actually called the police. According to gallery volunteer Beryl Ramsay, a group of elderly women recently visited the gallery and were far from offended: “Their only complaint was that they couldn’t lift the teapot to see what was behind it.” [The Border Mail]

Here’s an interview with Rossy de Palma, a.k.a. “Dama Picasso” about her decades of collaborations with Pedro Almodovar and how much fun being an artist was during La Movida Madrileña of the 1980s. [Dazed]

The Shchukin collection—which makes up the bulk of the Hermitage’s early modernist masterworks—is leaving Russia for the first time in a century for a loan to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. There’s a nice irony to this—Shchukin collected mostly Parisian artists during his lifetime and he fled to the French capital during the Russian revolution in which the state seized his art collection. [Bloomberg]

Lisa Cooley talks to ARTnews about closing her gallery. Cooley cites art fair exhaustion as an issue, as well the rise of social media. Seeing and sharing so many images desensitizes people and erodes community and relationship building. That becomes a huge problem when rent rates demand that prices double or triple every year. “The scale is the problem—whether that is scale of information you have to process, or competing with the larger galleries. You can’t scale relationships.” The business model for smaller galleries isn’t working. Hopefully Cooley will get her artists paid. [ARTnews]

As much as people like to hate on Santiago Calatrava, the World Trade Center redevelopment’s numerous cost-overruns, delays, and design failures—and malls—there’s no denying that the Transportation Hub oculus looks beautiful. [Dezeen]

Electric Objects is looking for a Curator-in-Chief. This is a pretty exciting job. It means overseeing the editorial and curatorial direction of the company, setting the direction for their commissions program, and hiring and building a capable team of writers and curators to do the job. [Electric Objects]

Jerry Saltz got himself into some hot water by posting a doctored image of a female tennis player without underwear. The image is now removed (and we won’t post it because the image is offensive), but there are plenty of women still fuming about this over Facebook. [Facebook]

A British community garden features a shed modeled on the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. Unfortunately, someone broke into the farm and vandalized it. The Stonebridge City Farm plans on fixing it. [BBC News]

People in Boyle Heights are really, really serious about fighting gentrification. [The Guardian]

An interactive map breaks down how individual block groups voted in yesterday’s primaries. It’s pretty fascinating stuff. Obviously, the Upper East Side voted for Hillary. But Trump didn’t do well in his home turf of Manhattan. And plenty of millennial-saturated pockets of the Lower East Side and Bushwick didn’t turn out for Bernie. Are the kids still registered at their parents’ addresses back in the suburbs? Why did so many poor people in Brooklyn vote for Ted Cruz and who are the people in Hispanic neighborhoods voting Trump? You could spend hours on this thing and walk away with so many questions. [The New York Times]

Students at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee have been freaking out after a set of rainbow-colored nooses was found hanging in a tree on campus. It turns out they were an art project for an intro to yarn class. A very stupid art project. [Newsweek]

Strange rituals, backdoor deals, power plays, vast fortunes… this isn’t a teaser for the new Game of Thrones season. This is how LACMA curators battle for acquisitions in front of the Collectors Committee and it is bizarre. [artnet News]

100 year old plus paintings captioned by computer programmers. Naturally, the captions are all about computer programming. [Classical Programmer Paintings]

Cornelia Parker’s “Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)” is now on display on The Met’s rooftop sculpture garden. It’s a fake house that looks just like the Bates Motel from Psycho. The installation will be up until Halloween, when we can be sure to expect many selfies. [Time Out]

Looks like that monster 73 story high tower poised to be built in Brooklyn got the green light from city council. It will literally be twice as tall as anything around it. [Gothamist]

Infamous art collector and hedge fund manager Steve Cohen has put his $72 million penthouse on the market. Again. When it was first listed the asking price was $115 million, so that’s a pretty significant price cut. I’m not surprised. The place looks like a corporate office — it’s not exactly homey. [Curbed]

Gallerist Laura Borghi, owner of Borghi Fine Art Gallery, is facing a fine and jail time for refusing to remove a painting by Tom Dash that features a butt. No, this isn’t happening in the UAE. This is in Englewood, New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan. [NJ.com]

Nicole Bonneau is watching all 403 episodes of Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting and recreating every single painting. Why? Mostly because it’s relaxing and also because it’s exactly the kind of thing that gets social media followers. [Huffington Post]

The Guggenheim will be installing gold toilet by artist Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan insists it’s a serious toilet not a joke toilet. Nancy Spector, the museum’s head curator said the Occupy Movement and a growing gap between the rich and poor came to mind when she saw the piece. No mention was made of Gulf Labor, a group negotiating fair working and living conditions for the laborers building their new museum in Abu Dhabi. The museum abruptly cut off negotiations with them this week. [The New York Times]

Anthony Antonellis’s contribution to “La petite mort du blingee”, a screeningof work by more than 30 artists invited by Lorna Mills that will accompany the closing reception her show at Transfer. The reception takes place tomorrow evening.

The Frank Stella retrospective at the Whitney museum of art gets a glowing review by Roberta Smith. We’re not exactly in a hurry to see this show. His early works are great, but we could do without the years of globby abstract wall sculptures. Smith seems to think the exhibition lingers too long on the early, more minimal works, which makes us want to see why she thinks that. [The New York Times]

You’re welcome: an infographic matching wines with their appropriate Halloween candy. Who knew Nerds went well with a sparkling? [Mental Floss]

Stumped on how to content farm that review on David Shields’ War is Beautiful? Take a page from Scott Indrisek, and get your cats to do it. [BLOUIN ARTINFO]

The sad story behind those 1920s German Expressionist costumes you may have seen last night’s Halloween party. [Hyperallergic]

Russia is such a fucking mess. Marat Guelman, a prominent gallery owner is being evicted from his gallery in Moscow. The landlord claims this is due to missed payments, but Guelman says the notice came two days after he held a charity auction for political prisoners. He’s taken to facebook with his complaints, and a whirlwind of press has resulted. None of it has resulted in a resolution between the parties though. [The Moscow Times]

Like the recent swell of fashion designers abruptly leaving luxury label creative director posts, I wonder if this is comparative to the art world’s version: gallery directors abandoning institutions in the midst of huge renovations or new building plans to take over a recently vacated, higher profile director position? Case in point: Sam Thorne, former Tate St. Ive director, who is now the new director of Nottingham Contemporary. He’s replacing Alex Farquharson, who has moved on to Tate Britain. [Artforum]

54,000 people are watching Bob Ross paint on Twitch right now. Yesterday marked the launch of Twitch Creative, which is livestreaming for art with an accompanying chat window. To celebrate, they’re holding an 8 day Bob Ross marathon. I have to admit, I haven’t quite grasped the appeal of Twitch. It’s not like 50,000 people can really have a great convo, but maybe there aren’t typically that many people tuned in at once? [Twitch via Gawker]

Today marks the opening of a new Warhol exhibition, focusing specifically on his celebrity composite series. TIFF Bell Lightbox’s “Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen” sounds like an interesting film-related exhibition, although we’re a bit wary about the exhibition design involving a “fun Screen Test machine” that lets you create your own screen test. [Toronto Star]

Worst landlord ever: Yehuda Herskovichas been charged with second-degree arson and more than a dozen other crimes after he allegedly placed a piece of cardboard in front of tenant Moses Greenfeld’s apartment last November and set it on fire. He was trying to collect late rent. [New York Post]

OMG lipsuction cups, a timely release with yesterday’s IMG MGMT “Cosmetic Masochism,” (Faith Holland and Seth Watter on torture porn and cosmetic tutorials). You have to hand it to the lip suction cup inventors. These things really work. [Jezebel]

Gentrification moves Eastward in Brooklyn, what else is new. If this story makes you mad, then go to the Brooklyn Independent Media public forum and panel tonight with Scott Stringer, urban planners, a city council members, and others. [New York Magazine]

20×200 is holding their annual RIDONK sale. Yesterday and this morning 40 of their prints are available at 40 percent off. There’s a new deal every day this week. These are great prices, so take advantage while you can. And while you’re on the site, try to buy some art at regular prices too, while you’re on the site. Support artists! [20×200]

Expect to hear a lot more about the International Center of Photography, now that New Museum visitors (and press) will have no excuse not to stop by. The museum is moving just across the street from the New Museum on Bowery. The $23 million space will “increase the sense of institutional stability and help attract additional major support,” the organization says. [Bowery Boogie]

“Leviathan” is up for Best Foreign Picture—lauded abroad and scorn from Russia—despite the fact that most Russians have not seen the film. This write up made me want to see the film. [The New York Times]

The engineering behind the deep-ridged potato chip, from the chip’s deep-ridged design to the development of new blade technology to create such deep ridges. This story is ridiculous and bizarrely captivating. [Daily Beast]

Not everyone is pleased with the Guggenheim’s architecture competition in Helsinki. After the Helsinki council shot down the Guggenheim foundation’s proposal to build a museum within city limits in 2012, they decided to hold an architecture competition anyway, and show the best museum designs in Helsinki. Now, the foundation hopes that by showing the finalists —in Helsinki, proper—the Finnish will be more willing to build a museum. Architect and writer Michael Sorkin has devised a rival competition to the Guggenheim’s, The Next Helsinki, which encourages ideas that aren’t just another big museum. [ArchDaily]

Bob Ross was apparently “the godfather” of ASMR triggers. Now I know what it feels like not to be able to do magic eye. [Mashable]

More strikes over the proposed privatisation of the National Gallery, which union secretary Mark Serwotka has called “reckless and risks damaging the worldwide reputation of what is one of the UK’s greatest cultural assets.” They’re serious. This time, it’s a five-day walkout. [BBC]

The Oslo National Academy of the Arts’ visual arts department is named Kunstfag. Can we be their media department? [Khio.no via Anthony Antonellis]

Goodbye Hennessy Youngman, hello Bob Ross. Yesterday Jayson Musson launched a new series “Painting toward Happiness,” where he teaches us to find the profound beauty in the everyday, through painting a photograph. [YouTube]

The French painter Balthus gets a mixed review from Roberta Smith for his show at The Met. “It proceeds in fits and starts; many of the paintings are interesting in one way or another but not especially original or even very convincing as totalities. The show is, in some ways, a study in kinds and degrees of failure.” [The New York Times]

Tumblr is wooing the art industry with Readymade, a new theme with a white cube aesthetic that LACMA and MoMA PS1 are already using. [BlouinArtInfo]

The Robert Indiana show at the Whitney was a pleasant surprise for Ken Johnson, who praised the work’s prophetic social commentary and rich ambiguity. “Beyond Love,” whose title makes clear the Whitney’s intent to transform Indiana’s reputation as a one-hit-wonder, is a vindication of the artist’s complex body of work. [The New York Times]

Today Mass MoCA officially opens its “Anselm Kiefer Hall Art Foundation” building. The exhibition will be open seasonally for the next 15 years, and it is housed in a specially constructed galvanized steel warehouse on the museum’s grounds. [North Adams Transcript]

Andy Adams of FlakPhoto.com talks about photography’s relationship to the internet, as well as recent curatorial projects on Wisconsin NPR. [WNPR]

In case you missed it last week, Carolina Miranda previewed Eli Broad’s new LA museum The Broad, an elaborate $140 million structure which is still under construction. Renderings promise a circular glass elevator, swooping ceilings, and enormous honeycomb windows. [ARCHITECT]

Bushwick artists, get ready to put on your very best Bob Ross impersonation. This Sunday, The Active Space will host a Bob Ross-inspired painting takedown where competing artists will duke it out over who can paint the best “Rossian” landscape. If you’re a happy trees type of painter, let The Active Space know because they need more artists. [The Brooklyn Paper]

The New York Post is looking for OkCupid users to profile on its weekly dating column, “Meet Market”. They’re trying to turn OkCupid into “Love Connection” of old, where readers get to vote on which dude gets to go on a date with a girl. They’ve already sent out some willing OkCupiders on dates (the paper will pay for all your drinks and vittles, except for the tip), with mixed results. Here’s where you sign up. [The New York Post]

Billionaire MOCA board member Steven A. Cohen will not be going to jail. Over the last year, his hedge fund SAC Capital has been under investigation by the government, but with the announcement of a settlement between SAC and the feds, the Treasury will now be receiving a whopping $614 million payout. [The Daily Beast]

We have reason to suspect that Greg Allen has been on a six year Indiana Jones-style quest that ends tomorrow with an opening at apexart. In 2007, he wrote a post on the first satellites for TV and radio communication, giant space balls, or satteloons [greg.org], which would have been visible to the naked eye. The launch of one “American Star,” he wrote, “helped to ease Americans’ Space Age insecurity.” Greg noted that America’s launch into space seems to have made an enormous impact on artists like Anish Kapoor, Tom Sachs, and Francis Alys; at the end of his post, he announced that he would be hunting down the original test models and photos. The show opens tomorrow night at 6 PM. [apexart]

Who wants to see better challenges on Bravo’s reality show Work of Art? Judging by critic Jerry Saltz’ 300 plus Facebook comments on the subject, I’m guessing most of us. Prompted by this clear calling, I teamed up with Carolina A. Miranda of C-Monster.net fame to propose a few suggestions for the Bravo Team.